YANGON, MYANMAR — More than 100 Buddhist monks marched peacefully Wednesday in a northern Myanmar town noted for its defiance of the country’s military rulers, the first large protest since the junta violently crushed a wave of anti-government demonstrations.
The monks marched for nearly an hour in the town of Pakokku, chanting a Buddhist prayer that has come to be associated with the pro-democracy cause. They did not carry signs or shout slogans, but their action was clearly in defiance of the military government, as one monk spelled out in a radio interview.
“We are continuing our protest from last month, as we have not yet achieved any of the demands we asked for,” the monk told the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Norway-based shortwave radio station and website run by dissident journalists.
“Our demands are for lower commodity prices, national reconciliation and immediate release of (pro-democracy leader) Aung San Suu Kyi and all the political prisoners,” said the monk, who was not identified.
He said they had little time to organize the march, so it was small, but “there will be more organized and bigger protests soon.”
Pakokku, a center for Buddhist learning with more than 80 monasteries, was the scene of one of the first of the recent anti-government marches by monks on their own.
Troops fired in the air to break up the Sept. 5 march and allowed members of pro-government associations to kick and beat several monks. The following day, the irate young monks took several officials hostage for several hours and demanded an apology, a cause that rallied other monks around the country to join the burgeoning marches in the weeks that followed.
Up to 100,000 people eventually took part in the largest pro-democracy demonstrations in Yangon that were crushed when troops fired on protesters on Sept. 26 and 27.
